[Alpines] OFF TOPIC SNOW.....

[Jan Eyerman]

My family comes from upstate New York.... aka "The snow belt" or "300 inches
of snow per winter".  For many years I could not understand why auto makers
made cars painted white- I never ever saw anyone local buy a white car...
they
"disappeared" in the snow and would get hit by snow plows.  We had a "party"
drive-way between two houses-2 families in each house so about 6 cars, when
heavy snow (several feet) were expected we parked our cars bumper to bumper
in
the driveway to minimize digging them out in the morning.  We also used to
put
"tenner toppers"-orange plastic balls on the top of the radio antenna so we
could find the car in the snow.  Somewhere I have a picture of what appears
to
be a field of snow with a bunch of orange balls sitting on top of the
snow-those are our buried cars.  Everybody put a hundred watt light bulb next
to the carb and on top of the intake manifold in addition to engine block
heater (or radiator hose heater or dipstick heater) to help start the car in
the morning.  If you had an old car that was really hard to start, you
drained
the oil at night and brought it in the house to keep it warm and then poured
it in in the morning. Especially if 30 below zero was forecast.  We used to
drive on "hardpack" all winter and did not see the road surface again until
spring.  I also remember the "jingle" of snow chains all winter.  You
couldn't
go much over 25MPH with them though, but with seriously snow covered roads
you
really couldn't safely go much faster.

I now live in New Jersey where below zero temperatures are rare and a foot of
snow is alot.  Of course I also have a heated two car garage under the house
(I would have loved that back in 1960 in Herkimer, NY).

Thanks for bringing back those memories for me.

Jan Eyerman